Juggling Anxieties

I once attempted to learn to juggle. Having no balls, tennis or otherwise, I used the next best thing – apples. They were round and nestled just right in the palm of my hand. Some months ago I had treated myself to a book. It was a Reader’s Digest book entitled “I Can Do Anything.” The book lied. Apparently I cannot do anything. Other people might be able to do anything, but after an hour or so of my attempts to juggle, all I had to show for it was three bruised apples and a wonderful apple fragrance that filled the room.

I was thinking about this after reading Psalm 4 this morning, particularly verse 7 – “You have filled my heart with greater joy”. My heart seems to be filled more with greater anxiety than it does joy. I feel like I am juggling concerns about a dozen different things, many of them holiday related!

I seem to be spending so much mental energy planning to manage the anxieties that I am not really feeling the joy I ought to be feeling.

Sitting with God this morning we disassembled all the various things I was feeling anxious about. I need to see things the way that God sees them, not as major obstacles hindering me from experiencing joy. Rather these kinds of concerns should make me head towards God, to hand them over to him, confessing that I am not designed to carry them around inside.

Leaving it all with God, I have opened the way for joy to flood through.

The Real Jesus

Imagine if you will a police line up. Imagine that there is an assortment of men standing side by side. They don’t look alike. There is nothing particularly similar about them. They are not even wearing the same kind of clothes.

Imagine if you had heard about a man who, for example, works with your husband, or wife. You have never met them before, but only hear about them in conversations.

Imagine that from the police line up you are asked, on the basis of all those conversations, to pick out the man. Obviously you don’t know for sure, and your best guess is not going to see him convicted of a crime or anything. You are simply guessing.

Actually this reminds me of a game show hosted by Donny Osmond not so long ago. I can’t remember the name of it, but the aim of the game was to match up the people to their occupations. I rather thought I would like to be a contestant, not on the basis of being able to pick the right people and match them to their jobs, but on the basis that I would get to stand very close to Donny Osmond!

My husband, a very long time ago, used to mention a friend of his who didn’t exactly work with him, but was involved with the Crofter’s Commission. I formed a picture in my mind of what I thought this person looked like. I thought he was in his early fifties, not particularly tall, quite stout, bald headed and serious looking. I have no idea how I came up with that kind of a picture.

Imagine my surprise when I actually got to meet the man. My husband will tell you that my jaw hit the ground with a solid thud. This man was Mr Universe personified. He was, as I blurted out to Joe afterwards, “Gorgeous!” He might have been in his early fifties but he didn’t look it. He was tall, slim, had brown hair that just long enough to flop over his forehead in a very attractive manner. And he smiled a huge smile. He hugged me, because I was Joe’s wife and I went weak at the knees.

My reaction came as no surprise to my husband as all the women in his section at work were drooling at the mere mention of his friend’s name! He just thought I was made of more solid stuff!

What happened to my small, stout, bald man? I tried to explain to my husband that part of my reaction was due to shock. I described my small, stout, bald man, confessing that I had no idea where I had come up with such a picture.

Having shared with some friends, Christian friends, that I have read and enjoyed “The Shack”, I have found myself involved in a dispute. They think the book is poking holes in the Christian faith. One of the main characters in the book is Papa, or God, but is not described in a familiar, masculine way. It took a while for me to stop being offended that his description of God did not match up to my impressions, or stereotypes. That was exactly the point that the author was making though that we see God in a certain way and anything that doesn’t match up we tend to ignore.

A while ago, the BBC produced a series of programmes called “Son of God”. They traced the main events of Jesus’ life. Part of the attraction of the programme was using all the up to date information to construct a model of what Jesus looked like. It was like the unveiling of some great mystery. What the Bible doesn’t tell us, the BBC using the latest technology was about to reveal.

I can remember being very disappointed with the final product. It didn’t look anything like “my Jesus”. My Jesus had definite Robert Powell overtones – blue eyes and long hair. This didn’t look like that! I remember thinking logically that the BBC’s Jesus was closer in terms of ethnic colouring and stuff.

I can understand fully why the second commandment is there – about not making graven images. We need to relate to Jesus in some way. It is when we refuse to change our picture that we begin to become unstuck.

When I meet Jesus I do wonder if I will recognise him. I am almost sure he will not look like Robert Powell. It will not be from the colour of his eyes, or his hir that I will know him. Perhaps it will be the welcome that is expressed though them.

Shacks and Shedding Light in Dark Places

I think I ended a previous post with the wish that I could give some answers to give some people breakthrough in darkness they were walking through. I just might have some “magic words”.

They are not my words. They are not words lifted from the Bible either. They come in the form of a book I bought last week “The Shack”


The blurb on the back sets the scene. A man has experienced the loss of his youngest daughter. Evidence points to her having been brutally murdered. He is left with a Great Sadness that seems to cover him like a heavy blanket over his shoulders. Four years on he gets a message from God to meet him at the shack where the murder occurred.

He chooses to take up the encounter not really sure whether it is a cruel joke or what. Does he really encounter God there or does he just fall asleep and dream it all?

“Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” That’s the big question that the book attempts to answer. Mack gets to ask the questions we would all like to ask if we were face to face with God. He gets to say the things we want to say, but we are sometimes too polite to say them, or too scared. He gets to shout at God. He gets to experience God’s tenderness, His tears, His smiles, His sadness and to hear God’s side of the argument.

The book digs holes in my preconceptions and makes me look again at what I think about God, about the world, about me and my part in it, about suffering, about answers and about how little I really know about anything.

There were things, truths explained, I already knew, but hadn't really allowed to filter down into my heart, and then through to my feet to be walked through daily. Being an RE teacher, the philosophy of religion comes as part of the degree. The book showed that it's not supposed to be mind-boggling, and largely irrelevant theory but life giving, Spirit breathing truth.

I did what I always do when I have got a good book to read. I spent the next few hours reading it. The washing up didn’t get done, or the ironing and I didn’t talk to anyone until I finished. This is not the way to read “The Shack”. One should read it slowly soaking in the words, taking the time to digest the words and think about them. There is a lot to chew on.

So I will read it through again - slowly.

Grow-Your-Own Mushrooms

Shitake spawn sounds like a Japanese insult, doesn’t it? I can picture it now. The scene opens with Mel walking down a country lane. Suddenly out of the bushes jump four ninja warriors covered in black from head to toe, wielding sharp curved swords. Mel takes up a menacing pose. In a brisk fight she disarms them all and they run off to shouts of “And don’t come back, you shitake spawn!”

Yeah well, I never have had pretensions of being a good script writer!

The shitake spawn that I am dealing with comes in a grow-your-own-mushrooms kit. Last weekend Cawdor Castle was hosting a food festival. It was all about promoting local produce, much of which was organic.

I managed to deeply impress one of the stall holders. Her son and daughter had been through my classroom a few years ago. Once I could bring to mind the mother’s surname, the names of the children were dragged out of the memory files. I was able to ask how Eric was doing and how Claire was doing. It was impressive!

Most of the stalls were the ones that usually set up for the Farmers’ Markets once a month. The one stall that was not usual was the one with the grow-your-own-mushroom kits. They had “grown ones” on display and many people were taking photographs of them because they looked so artistic. They looked very surreal. They were blocks something the size of a breeze blocks, grey in colour, with a few dozen mushrooms swarming all over them. It they were made of pottery you could see them selling well as ornaments!

Basically all you get is a man made block of something that looks remotely like polystyrene but it is made up of oak shavings, wood chips and bran. One is supposed to stick the block, in its plastic bag, in the airing cupboard and leave it for six weeks. After that you put it outside, or in the fridge for a couple of days to shock the block and initiate fruiting. Then it’s back to the airing cupboard with a tray of water and the mushrooms start to appear in a few days.

The kit comes with a money back guarantee. If, for some odd reason, you have a dud kit – no shitake spawn – you can claim your money back!

The sellers encourage the folks who buy the kits to take their picture with it, once it’s active, and post it on their “Hall of Fame” web page.

It is amazing that something that looks so uninteresting and dull on the outside, has inside of it, the potential to be over-run with shitake mushrooms in a few months time! There is life residing in that block of oak shavings, wood chips and bran.

I have got something residing inside of me. I may look dull and uninteresting on the outside, but inside of me is the Holy Spirit, and, with Him, the potential to be over-run with His life giving power and His all embracing love for everyone. There is nothing “dud” about the Spirit within and no need for God’s money back guarantee. No need to incubate what I have in an airing cupboard, although a warm worshipful attitude will no doubt help. Maybe just like my mushrooms, I will need “shocked” into activity…but there will be a harvest.

Gardening Leave

My husband is swinging between hope and despair – well, maybe hope and despair are not quite the right words. Between being “thoroughly miserable” and “putting on a brave and cheerful face” is perhaps a better way of saying it.

He was away on business most of the week, but keeping an eye on a Scottish debate about the future of the Crofters’ Commission where he works. There had been talks about, not exactly closing it down, but slimming it down. Lots of the things that the Commission do could be done by other government and non-government bodies. Joe manages grants and project developments. He does it really well! This is not just a loving wife’s biased opinion! The people that move to his department through Joe’s excellent people skills usually go on to do great and glorious things when they get promoted! He does a good job!

However, it is the grants and development projects that they have decided to hand over to other bodies who they think could do it better. The Commission will simply regulate whatever it is they regulate, and they won’t have responsibility for developing and managing grant schemes. When they deal with crofters they won’t be able to help them access the various grants that they may be entitled to, like they can now. Someone else will do that who doesn’t perhaps have the necessary crofting expertise. They will just have the money and make their own recommendations about who gets it and maybe a specialised small community of farmers will not be at the top of their list!

This means that Joe’s job has gone! It hasn’t gone yet, but it is on the way out. The very thing they pay him to do, someone else will be doing, and to my unbiased loving wife mind, will not do it half as good as Joe does it! Joe will no longer be “the mannie with the money” and get his wee drams from the crofters when he visits them. No more visits.

He is not going to be made redundant. He will continue to be employed, but not doing what he has loved doing for the last ten years or more. He could broker a deal where he goes with the job when it gets passed over to another body – but he is a Crofters’ Commission man.

Already there is an unofficial “Save the Joe” campaign at his work. He is not an endangered species, and I am sure that whatever he goes on to do, he will excel.

He was telling me that if he was a few grades higher he might be given “Gardening Leave.” This is where the job you were doing no longer exists and nothing else at your management level is available. They don ‘t want to loose you to some other company, so they agree to pay you full salary while you stay at home and they wait for a post to become available that fits your grade. It only really happens to the top grade people.

Gardening leave would be good – if he actually spent it in the garden. He is dreaming of getting a dog and doing the rounds of the newsagent, the betting shop and the pub for a half a pint. Keep dreaming, sunshine.

Quite how I would cope with him staying at home, and getting paid to stay at home, while I was out battling with my acne and attitude inflicted adolescents, who know? It won’t reach that stage…will it?

I am glad that our security, mine and Joe’s, is not in how we are doing in the workplace. God is the one who holds both our lives in his very capable hands.

Cast Your Burdens

The way that the message paraphrases Bible passages can be really stirring. We used this section of Psalm 89 in our worship meeting on Sunday.

With your well-muscled arm and your grip of steel—
nobody trifles with you!
The Right and Justice are the roots of your rule;
Love and Truth are its fruits.
Blessed are the people who know the passwords of praise,
who shout on parade in the bright presence of GOD.
Delighted, they dance all day long; they know
who you are, what you do—they can't keep it quiet!
Your vibrant beauty has gotten inside us—
you've been so good to us! We're walking on air!
All we are and have we owe to GOD,
Holy God of Israel, our King!

It was only this morning that I read on to the end of the Psalm. I was in need of a bit of stirring. Reading on was not so encouraging, however:-

But GOD, you did walk off and leave us,
you lost your temper with the one you anointed.
You tore up the promise you made to your servant,
you stomped his crown in the mud.
You blasted his home to kingdom come,
reduced his city to a pile of rubble
Picked clean by wayfaring strangers,
a joke to all the neighbors.
You declared a holiday for all his enemies,
and they're celebrating for all they're worth.
Angry, you opposed him in battle,
refused to fight on his side;

What is this? This is not the God that I love and know…is it? What happened to all the stirring encouragement?

I was talking earlier on in the week about insights into Genesis 3, the bit where the curses start. It is the serpent, the devil, who is cursed to crawl on his belly and eat dust all the days of his life. That is not the fate reserved for Adam and Eve. Their may be pain in childbirth for Eve, and hard labour for a reluctant harvest for Adam, but are not cursed to crawl on their bellies and eat dust. And yet, it seems there are times when we feel like we are crawling on our bellies and eating dust!

Reading that second part of the Psalm this morning brought to mind the difficulties a couple of my friends are going through. They feel on the receiving end of God walking off, tearing up his promise, blasting their faith to kingdom come and reducing their lives to a pile of rubble. Obviously they know that God has, in reality, done nothing of those things. Knowing this in your heart is one thing, but sometimes your experience doesn’t match up.

I was surfing last night to see if anyone had come up with an enlightening truth I could pass on. I googled “When the going gets tough” and came up with the lyrics to the song which wasn’t helpful!

A few pages along I came across a psychological study into whether there was a time when it was better for you to give up than to keep on pressing on with something. When the going gets tough, they concluded, sometimes the right thing to do is to give up, but, not give up forever. What they discovered was the best way to persevere in difficult times was to let go for a while, give yourself a break, and then pick up the burden afresh. Giving up altogether on something was not conducive to good mental and physical health, but laying down the burden for a short while, and then picking it up again later was much better.

I don’t know if that applies, or how that applies to issues of faith. Laying down burdens seems to be a spiritual principle. I guess it matters exactly where you lay them down. And which burdens exactly you can lay down. Perhaps the burden that you lay down is not necessarily the same burden you pick up again. The process of laying the burden down before God gives Him a chance to transform it. Or perhaps it is not the nature of the burden that changes at all. The person that laid the burden down is not the same person that picks it up because God has transformed them.

I feel like I have been carrying the burden of my friend’s situations around with me today. My mind has been humming to itself the golden oldie “Cast your burdens on to Jesus for he cares for you.” And I have.

But I wish there were some answers I could give them to break through the darkness that seem to be walking through right now.

Being Together

I will be the first one to admit that I joined in all the complaining! Yes, that was me muttering under my breath. It may not have been the word “Humbug!” but it was certainly the kill joy attitude!

The notice came around work sometime earlier last week. Some bright spark has suggested a fundraising event that involved everyone piling out into the car park beside the canteen and doing a giant conga.

I could think of better things to do with my time, and more useful ways to raise funds for things. A litter pick up wouldn’t go amiss. Why not issue everyone with a pair of plastic gloves and black bin liner? Get sponsored for the weight of bin liner! But no – a conga was deemed to be just what we needed.

Our union man wasn’t impressed. He thought it might be a health and safety issue – all those people packed into the car park. If someone fell over, who’s to say they might not get trampled to death?

I prayed for rain, knowing that it would be postponed if the heaven opened and drenched us all. It was possibly the sunniest afternoon we have had all year!

The people lined up, the music blared from loudspeakers, the boss directed operations using a megaphone and someone stood on the roof of the building recording the event for prosperity. We moved in dribs and drabs. Some people laughed because they were outside and the sun was shining. That had to be better than being inside sitting at desks.

The music changed. What was it called? “Popcorn” Do do do do - do da do – OK, so that does absolutely nothing to give you a clue as to the tune.

There are some tunes that come with memories attached! In my childhood days, our family was firmly committed the village amateur dramatic society. Every year they put on Christmas pantomimes. My first stage appearance was at the age of six or seven in the village production of “Robinson Crusoe”. I was part of the children’s chorus. I was a pygmy. I was certainly just the right size. Come to think of it, I am probably still the right size to be a pygmy – the PC phrase is “vertically challenged”.

As pygmies we hopped, jiggled and shimmied our way through a dance routine to “Popcorn” dressed as skeletons!

So when “Popcorn” blasted out of the loud speakers that sunny afternoon, I was back to being six again! I joined in, not just with my body hopping this way and that, but with my heart!

Looking back over the event, I have to confess, that despite all the grumbling and complaining that went on among the less-young, there was a sense of community that we have not seen in the workplace for quite a while. It’s not often that we are all the same place, at the same time, involved in the same frivolous activity. Too often we have our only cliques and hidey holes for tea breaks that we don’t often spend that much time together.

Don’t ever under-estimate the value of being together!

The Going-Nowhere Rut

Don’t jump to the conclusion that just because I have been silent on the blog, that I have been leading a boring life. That just isn’t true! Well, some people might dispute that – I may be active, but what I have been doing some people might consider to be boring!

A couple of weeks ago I went for a really long walk. In the local Inverness Courier they usually include a route for walking or a bike route. The bike is in the shed with tyres that require pumping up. I have finally conceded that the bike and I are never going to be great friends. Sometimes the walking routes are not nearby, but this time it followed the canal path and then just outside of Clachnaharry it headed up into the forest. It was do-able, I had downed a very hearty breakfast fry up in the morning and was conscious that the scales on Monday were beckoning!

I don’t seem to be able to follow a route! I managed the first bit - the bit that followed the canal. I managed to find the path up to the forest. I managed to find the yellow path marker, and a little way along the route, the blue path marker. The instructions went on about a steep path but failed to say whether it was steep uphill or steep downhill. Having gone up hill already, I deemed it time to go downhill. I chose wrong!

I found myself in a lovely shady glade. Through the trees I could see glimpses of Inverness basking in the sunshine, and took myself off the path I was on to have a better look.

When I first moved to Inverness, the forest was a favourite haunt for myself and the friends I had made. We used to climb up to a prominent place and pray over the city. In our less “spiritual” moments we used to play hide and seek in the dark! When Joe and I first married, the flat we rented was a stone’s throw away from the forest. That was a long time ago. I was younger then and I was much fitter then. I think I have always struggled uphill, but I don’t seem to remember sweating such copious amounts of fluid in those days. So, yes, it was a bit like a trip along memory lane!

Turning back to find the path I had strayed from, I almost walked into a huge spider’s web. The web was huge, but the spider wasn’t! The web was stretched across two trees that were more than my arm’s lengths apart. I have absolutely no idea how the spider did it. Did it drop to the floor, walk across the space and then climb up the next tree dragging the slender line behind it? Did it wait for just the right kind of breeze and drift across from one tree to the other? This was one spider with a degree in architecture! I had the camera with me, with a flat battery inside, but “took” a photo, just in case. Just a few steps, and obviously with a different angle, the web was not visible.

This morning I was thinking about the spider’s web. Had I not left the path, I wouldn’t have seen it. It was worth seeing, and if I had stayed on the path, I would have missed it. The man that wrote the route told me to look out for deer, and for red squirrels – neither of which were in abundance that afternoon. He didn’t mention spiders’ webs.

Sometimes our daily path through life follows a familiar route. We have our blue markers and our yellow markers and we walk the same path day in, day out. We maybe see the same people, perhaps feel like we have the same conversations with them and deal with the same irritations usually in the same way each time. Life takes on a predictable hue. We get the rare glimpses of the deer and the red squirrel – but we stick to the familiar trail. We almost know in advance what’s coming up. We know how to deal with the familiar because we are used to it. Our lives are perhaps in a rut – not a positive rut, but a kind of going-nowhere rut.

You don’t find spectacular spider’s webs on well trodden paths! Sometimes we need to invite the Holy Spirit to take us off the familiar path, the going-nowhere rut we have found ourselves walking, teach us to let go of our usual responses and reactions to things and take a different trail.

Getting to Know Me

For no apparent reason our Sky digital receiver box has decided to stick on standby and nothing we can do, or the nice support staff on the end of the help line can do either. We have been advised to get a new one. The man on the end of the line suggested we try a local dealer rather than have one of their men come out and see us. We did think for a moment of taking the opportunity to upgrade to a HD package but it was more than we could afford right now.

So last night was a quiet night. I might have switched off the TV and found something else to do anyway, but I didn’t like the decision forced upon me.

I decided to pop along to Blockbuster to see if there was Mel type DVD I could chill out with. I picked up one or two that sounded interesting. I wasn’t looking for girly romance. I wasn’t looking for scary horror. I’m not sure I was up to grisly murders and who-dunnits. That kind of narrowed the list. What really put me off many of the ones I picked up was the box on the cover that informs you of strong language, level of nudity and sustained violence. Just about everything I thought I might like had lots of strong language and violence and stuff. I actually stood in the line for all of five minutes before I realised the one I held in my hand also included “sustained torture”. I put it back in the shelf.

I lived for a while with my parents after returning from working in Cyprus for five years. It was a mixed faith kind of street. The corner shops were owned and run by Pakistani gentlemen. One of the shops was a video rental place. We used to hire videos quite often. The man in the shop got to know my tastes over the months. It was nothing I said, but the comments from my mother, “Our Mel wouldn’t like that film…too much swearing.” He used to carefully select a half dozen or so films just for me and keep them aside until I visited the shop. I never really needed to browse because I would be presented with this pile of videos he had vetted! I have to confess that they were mostly PG certificates with the occasional 12 certificate thrown in. 18 certificate films never made it into the selection.

I missed that last night! I missed popping around to the corner shop to find out what my Pakistani friend had decided was suitable for me! I miss someone knowing me that well and looking out for me.

We seem to live in a society where people don’t seem to know people. I bought a book a couple of weeks ago. “Just Walk Across the Room” by Bill Hybels. I shouldn’t need a book to tell me that I need to walk across a room and talk to people. I certainly shouldn’t need one to tell me how to walk across a room. Having said that, I have been trying to walk across a few rooms in my work place. I have joined a couple of working groups looking at aspects of our working day. Partly it is because I feel strongly about the particular issues, but also it is to do with allowing people to get to know me better. Whether these connections I am making will lead to deeper relationships and challenging conversations I don’t know. It just feels good.

Incidentally, this morning I was complaining to my husband about the over abundance of films with too much nudity and swearing. His reaction was to fling off the covers, swing his arms and legs about, in the bed, dressed in very little, and chant “Bugger, bugger, bugger.”

“You mean, like, that kind of nudity and swearing?”

It maybe doesn’t come across so well in writing – but it was a very funny moment.

A Caterpillar With Wings

This time last week I dashed home from work to put the washing out on the line. I was planning to be gone just for a half hour. I don’t know what I drove over, but there was a horrible crunching sound. I thought it was the sound effects on the radio play I was listening to – but, no, it was a flat tyre.

It has taken a week to organise a replacement. I drove the car over to garage near to where I work and told them to do whatever needed to be done and I would collect the car at the end of the day.

The garage was a fifteen minute walk away. It had rained most of the afternoon. It was the kind of rain that was so light that it was almost not worth putting up an umbrella. About five minutes into my walk back to the garage I realised that my shoe was letting in water. I squelched into the garage ten minutes later to discover that they hadn’t been able to do anything about the tyre because they couldn’t find the wheel nut.

It had occurred to me that they might not find it, but I assumed that seeing as they had a phone number, they could always call and ask. Oh..right...men don’t do that! They don’t ask. It’s not macho to ask!

The man at the reception desk assured me, once I had opened the little compartment between the front seats, retrieved the wheel nut, and placed it in his hand, that as soon as there was an available ramp free, they would sort the tyres.


In the space of one and a half hours I had read every paper and magazine on the coffee table in the waiting room. Why is it that garages always buy the Sun?

In one of the papers it had the story of someone seeing an upside down rainbow in Cambridge. There was a picture of it.

I remember once upon a time I was on a train journey. I think I was heading south at the time. The woman opposite me was gazing out of the window with a very puzzled expression. She had that kind of intense stare about her. I twisted around in my seat to see what she was looking at. It wasn’t a rainbow, upside down or the right way up, but a blob of colour. It was as if someone had reached into the sky and gathered up the rainbow’s arc and scrunched it up. You could identify the red, and yellows, the blues and the greens – but they were all mixed into one blob instead of lined up in an arc shape. We both stared at the blob, trying to work out exactly what we were seeing.

You know something about rainbows? No two people see exactly the same rainbow! It’s all about angles and things. You have to bee looking up at a certain angle to see the rainbow. I don’t know – something like 42 degrees. My 42 degrees will be different from someone else’s 42 degrees depending on how tall you are and where exactly you are standing.

Anyway, back to the upside down rainbow. Remember if you will, that I have squelched into the garage with wet feet, the tyre isn’t repaired because of the missing wheel nut and I have read my way through everything on the coffee table in the last hour and a half. I think that entitles me to a less than positive response!

“Oh yeah,” thought I, “It’s just an ordinary rainbow printed upside down.”

I apologise for my cynical thought. It reminds me of a comment made to my husband, long before we were married. He was sharing a house with another fellow. There was a beautiful butterfly, wings splayed out on the window. My husband pointed it out to his flatmate,

“It’s just a caterpillar with wings.”

He apologised swiftly recognising it to be a cynical remark. His day at work had been a bit of a bummer.

My day, also, had been a bit of a bummer! But that is no excuse not to marvel at natures little idiosyncrasies.

Stains

There is a stain on the bathroom floor. It’s kind of reddish brown colour. It could be blood – but it isn’t. It’s hair colour! Belle Colour by Garnier 5.5 Natural Light Auburn to be precise. I had been feeling very conscious of the grey roots and decided to tackle them myself and save a couple of hours in the hairdressers and a hefty bill at the end. This is my second attempt to do it myself and it looks OK, as long as you don’t scrutinise the underneath layers of my head!

There is a stain on the bath mat beside the bath. It’s a kind of reddish brown colour. It could be hair colour – but it isn’t. It’s blood! Not a huge amount, so those of you who haven’t seen my husband for a while need not worry that I have done away with him. It is his blood incidentally. He cut his toe in the bath! We had a new bath put in a while ago. The previous one was leaking and it was unsettling to see the light bulb at the back of the hallway filling with water every time someone had a bath! This new bath has a stopper rather than a plug. Once the stopper is pulled out, there is a jaggy edged trim to the plug hole. I have shredded my finger on it clearing away the build up of hairs. Quite how my husband managed to cut his toe on it is beyond me.

However he managed it, he is a little bleeder. There were bloody footprints from the bath, along the landing and into the bedroom. There may be bloody footprints all the way up to the bed, but it is a dark blue carpet, so it is well camouflaged.

It took most of the plasters from a travel pack to bind up the broken skin.

He hates anyone touching his feet. He was a brave soldier!

A Game of Two Halves

It was just bad planning by the Union bosses to organise a meeting in Glasgow for a weekend where Celtic were playing away to Motherwell! My better half being a Union man was at the meeting and took the time to catch up on family. I joined the party on the Friday night.

We planned to watch the Celtic match in a bar that had Santanta. We were somewhere near Glasgow Cross I think, just a few hundred yards away from the Barras.

We watched the first half of the match in a bar diner. There was a huge screen, with a couple of big sofas parked in front of it. Being a bar diner, there were menus everywhere, appetising aromas and plates wheeled in with carefully arranged food on them. The sound from the match was turned off.

The times that I have watched football matches without any kind of commentary have not been good times. I don’t know who has just kicked the ball to whom, or who had committed what foul, or who had just scored the goal. They run around in enforced silence hugging one another and I am trying to get a glimpse of the name on the back of the jersey.

Football is not the number one item on the menu. It may be up on the big screen, but the food on the plate takes precedence. People are not really involved in the game, it is just background flickers and is not allowed to interfere with conversation – and eating.

We were there simply because there was a blackboard perched outside the door telling us that they were showing the game. Showing was all they were doing. We decided to find another place showing the game for the second half.

A hundred yards down the road we went into the Sarecen’s Head – or the Sarry’s Heid. The same game was playing – a different audience was watching. There must have been a half dozen small screens in addition to the big one, so that no matter where you sat in the bar, whatever direction you faced you could see the game.

The volume was definitely switched on, but you couldn’t hear it so well on account of the commentary given by the watchers. The commentary was sprinkled liberally with choice swear words most often aimed at the Celtic players for not scoring in the second half.

Eating and drinking played second fiddle to the game. Every kick of the ball, every throw in and every corner was scrutinised. The game was centre stage and every person watching was drawn in. It mattered who won and who lost. Somehow there were no spectators in the room, but everyone was a participator.

Two places, involved in exactly the same activity and yet two very different experiences. It made me think about church. You can have two churches involved in exactly the same activity – worshipping God – and yet end up with two very different experiences. I have been in churches that have been very well-behaved. There is order and structure. Everyone knows what happens next – like the menu on the tables. Sometimes, although it says so on the poster outside, God is not really at the centre. The minister might put Him there, but the congregation might there for other reasons – they always go because they have always been.

And then you get churches like the Sarry’s Heid. God is centre stage and there are no spectators. You cannot help but be affected by the enthusiasm and the involvement of the people around you. I admit that there isn’t a sprinkling of choice swear words, but people are not quiet either. They allow what is on their hearts to spill out.

Tears in the Town Centre

I wouldn’t say that it takes a lot to make me cry! I wouldn’t say that I do it all the time! I would have to say that it is not often I cry in public – I usually save my tears for private.

At the weekend, in the middle of Buchanan Street, I cried!



John Innes, who calls himself the Peoples Tenor (note the absence of the apostrophe – we discussed later on, after I had done mopping up the tears, where it ought to have been placed, on the cover of the CD my husband bought his mother) was doing a promotional event. He was not quite your usual busker. There was no guitar, no open guitar case with a sprinkling of change, but just a mike and a backing track.


He started off with “Ave Maria”.

I am not sure whether I like classical music but it was hard not to appreciate the quality of his voice. He will be having a concert later in the year and was drumming up a bit of interest and giving people a foretaste of what they could expect.

It was his next song “You raise me up” that caused all the tears. Was it Westlife that took it into the charts? Sometimes you take a song for granted without having listened to the words properly. I suppose to that the really well trained tenors know how to really enunciate the words.

When I am down and oh my soul, so weary
When troubles come and my heart burdened be
Then I am still and wait here in the silence
Until you come and sit a while with me

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be

Wouldn’t you like to know who the “You” is? I suppose that all of us have different “you”s depending on our circumstances. For some it might be a parent that had always been there to inspire. For others it might be a husband or a wife that sees them through the difficult times. Perhaps it is the child inspiring the parent.

For me the person that raises me up to be ”more than I can be” is God. He is the one that comes and sits awhile with me. He makes the journey to come to me and doesn’t always wait for me to make the first move.

Luke 15:4-6 says "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.”

We all have times when we simply need to be carried and God loves to carry His children in His arms.

Embarrassed as I was at surreptitiously wiping away the tears, I rejoiced that my heart was, and is, soft enough to be touched.

Tossing Down the Gauntlet

We all meet people that rub us up the wrong way – some of us meet more of them than others. Our church leader made an interesting observation the other week that sometimes people rub us up the other was because we create an environment by our approach to them that makes it happen. The tone of our voice, the set of our shoulders speak as loudly to people as do our words.

I don’t often deal with just individuals. I deal with groups of people. As much as I mind the tone of my voice and the set of my shoulders as I deal with an individual, I always have to consider the good of the group. They are watching me to see what I do that creates for them an environment where they feel looked after and protected. In order to do that I have to take on the challenge of the individual, pick up the gauntlet as it were that he or she tosses to the floor. I am the top banana, and one or two would love to pull me off my tree!

Some times it wears me down. The fuse that was a long one at the start of the day gets a little bit shorter with each and every encounter. One lesson I have learned is to blow well before you have run out of fuse! Blow early and you are in control, you are pretending to be angrier than you really are. It’s an act, scary as it is. Wait until the fuse runs out, and then blow - well, who knows what you will do or say because you are out of control.

There was one such encounter recently where the fuse was short. The person in question had been most aggressive – not only towards me, but towards others. I could well understand if someone punched him soundly on the nose. He had pushed us all well beyond the limits.

I could hear the voice in my head saying, “That is it! You have been so obnoxious! You know what I would really like to do to you?” At this point I confess to visions of the person being mowed down by a lorry – Oh, come on, don’t you sometimes feel that way too?

Before I could answer my own question, the Holy Spirit darted in and answered it for me.

“Pray for you!”

Talk about tossing down the gauntlet!

Before I could argue the point and say that I preferred the lorry scenario, the Spirit continued…remember all of this is in my head, not said out aloud…

“And do you know what will happen when I start to pray? You are going to change! And do you know why you’re going to change? You are going to change because the God that I pray to can do anything.”

It was said so seriously, almost like a threat! I have met people who in dealing with others that have caused harm to themselves and others, have resorted to cursing them – not just your the angry flow of expletives kind of curse – but the spiritual kind! The Spirit made it quite clear that the kind of prayer he was looking for on behalf of this individual was the wholesome kind, the building up, the edifying, the intercession kind where I held in my heart love for the individual and looked for the best for them.

Make no mistake, I am know that often the change happens in the person that is praying rather than the object of the prayer. The situation doesn’t change, but their attitude and reaction to it does. This was not one of these times. It was not my words about changing the person – but the Spirit’s. I have every expectation that I will change anyway as I get involved in the praying process.

Later that night, the Spirit reminded me of those unspoken words. Just because they had not been said out loud did not make them any less binding.

So I prayed!

Stepping On Landmines

That sounds like it ought to be the title of a book! It isn’t! It is, however, a rather apt description of part of my afternoon! We are not talking about real landmines just proverbial ones – but they can do just as much damage. They may not rip off a leg or anything, but they can rip a large hole in your heart.

The thing about landmines, so I gather, is that you don’t know they are there until you’ve stepped on one. The landscape you are walking through looks harmless. It may be that you have walked the route often without injury!

I got into conversation with some young people this afternoon, talking about the existence of God. We were batting back and forth opinions about whether there was a God or not. I suppose there is a tendency to take out the usual reasons from the back of the mind, dust them off and present them much like a conjurer talking a rabbit out of a hat! I talked about the precise nature of the universe. If it all begins with a Big Bang – don’t explosions create chaos rather than order? The world is too full of balance and mathematical details for it to have come about by chance.

One young lady talked more personally and spoke about prayers she had had answered, and for her it was proof that there was a God.

“What about the ones that don’t get answered?”

The young man who asked the question shared a heart breaking story of his grandmother who had been a devout church goer. She never missed a Sunday. A wonderful lady who gave herself unreservedly to God, she got sick. He prayed for her to recover, but she died.

“How come God answered your prayers, but he ignored mine?”

There is no answer to that one. It seemed to open the floodgates. Other young people who had been happy to sit back and let the loud ones speak suddenly came up with their own unanswered prayer experiences. One young man shared about his mother’s pregnancy. Up until quite close to the birth everything was going well. Suddenly there were difficulties and she was in hospital. He prayed for the safe recovery of his mother and the baby, but she miscarried.

“Where was God then?”

You can’t be a Christian for long before you encounter these hurdles. Things just don’t add up the way they should. Good people go through hell on earth. Why isn’t their goodness somehow a vaccination against bad stuff happening? Bad people make our lives a misery and yet they sail through life apparently immune. It wouldn’t be so bad if these were just little issues – but they are huge! They are mountain sized issues. Those with faith are just as much liable to flattened when they fall on top of them.

I have learned over the years to live in a state of paradox. Things happen that cause me personal heartbreak, but my underlying faith, although bashed about, remains very much intact. There are times I ask “Why?” Sometimes I get an answer, most times I don’t and I remind myself that one day I will know. One day there will be no more of the “though a glass darkly”. For now, not understanding, I try my best to trust in the character of the God I know, love and follow.

I have come to that place in life when I realise that I don’t really need to know the answers. I don’t need a neat and tidy box, although that does help! I just need to know that God is with me in it. I have found my rock.

Helping someone else to find their answers is a challenge.

“I don’t know” might well be an honest answer, but it is not the answer they are looking for.

A Fishy Tale

We were talking about pets in work today. I didn’t tell any horror stories about our pet gerbil, Larsson’s Hairband, though one of my colleagues has a daughter who has asked for a couple of gerbils for her birthday!

I told them my fishy tale instead!

I cut my teaching teeth in the east end of London. The last stop on the Victoria line on the underground is Walthamstow. I lived in the nearby district of Chingford, right on the edge of the Epping Forest. Being new to teaching, and new to London, I lodged with a family. It was a big three story house.

The landlady was a social worker. She had separated from her husband and was bringing up a daughter by herself.

This particular daughter had asked for a tropical fish tank for her birthday. She filled it with the usual selection of sunken wrecks, anchors and such like. The fish were guppies. They swam about and looked peaceful.

One particular guppy seemed to get bigger than the others and started to bully the smaller fish. It would quite viciously bite big chunks off fins and tails – or rather, little chunks seeing as they were so small. Little essential chunks. There were even times when the remains of guppies floated on the top of the water.

Now remember the landlady was a social worker! She decided to do something about the bully. She fished him out of the tank with a net and dropped him into a bowl of cold water! It wasn’t freezing cold. It just wasn’t tropical temperatures.

She left him in the bowl, by himself for a week.

Then she returned him to the tank with the rest of the guppies. Perhaps it was that chance the other fish had to grow a little quicker without his bullying behaviour that caused the change, and not the week in solitary confinement. The returned guppy behaved perfectly and gave up him bullish manners!

Telling the story, there is always a ripple of laughter. There is always the sceptic response too. I mean, don’t we all know that fish have a two minute memory? They swim around the tank, see the same scenery, but they just don’t remember they have seen the scenery before. Two minutes and everything is new.

I know what I saw because I was a witness, and yet in telling the tale, I am haunted by the fish’s apparent two minute memory. The bullying guppy could not possibly have remembered the solitary confinement and the cold water!

I have been rescued! Apparently fish are not as dumb as we make them out to be! Granted, some of them may not be the card carrying MENSA’s of the marine world, but they do remember for a lot longer than two minutes!

According to a newspaper article, anything a rat can do in being taught to learn to negotiate a maze and get rewarded with treats for its endeavours, the same is true of a fish. They have been given a bad press.

It makes me wonder about information that we heard somewhere, once upon a time and we – in fishy terms – swallowed, hook line and sinker! What other information do we presume to know as undisputed truth, but it is just isn’t true at all?

Someone once told me, and I believed them, that God was watching me. He had a little black book in which he recorded all of my misdemeanours. Maybe it wasn’t such a little book as I was not angel. I fretted about that book and tried hard to be good. I put myself under intense pressure and eventually cracked up. I could never be that good, so why keep trying?

What a relief it was to discover the truth. There is no black book! Yes, I am being watched, but watched in love. I don’t need to be good enough because Jesus has been good enough on my behalf.

Something That Isn't Jesus

I have come from a church history of preachers that like to dissect Bible passages and then order their notes neatly with alliterating headings! They make four or five points that are perhaps memorable because the headings start with the same letter.

This way of bringing a word appeals to the “control freak” nature in me. I like things to fit into neat patterns and structure. I don’t really do “messy”.

However, having said that, in the Monday evening contemplation of the first chapter of Genesis, we were encouraged to think about just one thing that struck us as we read through. Under normal circumstances my mind would be making leapfrog connections between the words and alliterated headings for each section! But I kept it to the one thing!

I am bringing the word this week in church and decided to focus on the one thing again. The story is following on from the account of the Transfiguration. A man with a demon possessed child brings his son to Jesus and finds his disciples instead. Despite their experience – they have cast out demons before – they are unable to help.

The one thing that struck me was the whole concept of people coming to us, the Church, or us, as individual Christians, looking for Jesus, and finding something that isn’t Him at all.

Personally, as I was praying as I prepared my word, I am aware, that just like the disciples, I have done it before. I am on the rota for bringing the word. I have a bookcase-ful of commentaries and studies. I have a list of favourite website addresses and a history of successfully (?) bringing a message. I have done it before! But when my brothers and sisters come, and visitors come, to a meeting, looking for Jesus, do they get Jesus or do they get Mel? There are times when there is no difference. I am doing what I am supposed to be doing – just being the messenger, and faithfully delivering a God given message. However, there are also times when, I am not sure about the message. I am not sure that I have heard from God, but I am sure that with my mental gymnastics I can come up with the alliterated headings that apply. What I might end up with is good stuff that can inspire anyone. It’s stuff that they can build with – but it might not be God stuff which is what truly transforms.

This morning I went to mass at St. Mary’s. There seemed to be a little bit more incense waving and more bell-ringing than normal. I thought of the people that come looking for Jesus. Do they find Him? Undoubtedly there are people who find Jesus in the ritual and the ceremony, but for some people, all of that becomes interference and intrudes on their search of Christ. Perhaps there are others that never find Jesus but never realise they haven’t found him. The ritual and the ceremony becomes a substitute fro the real thing.

All churches have their ritual. Substitute a worship band for incense waving, for example, or clapping hands for bell ringing. Any of the things that we do can end up being a substitute for the real encounter.

The man with the demon possessed child knew when he had encountered Jesus. In the presence of Jesus he couldn’t pretend a faith level he didn’t possess. He realised the poverty of his spirit, acknowledging just how much help he needed. His son was released from his demonic jailer. Without Jesus none of those things are possible.

I don’t want people to come to me looking for Jesus, and finding something that isn’t Him.

Life Exploding

Earlier on in the week I was reading from Psalm 33:9 “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” Last night, at a prayer meeting, we were reading and contemplating the first chapter of Genesis. It didn’t take much for me to remember those words in Psalm 33.

The spoken word of God is creative. There was no wave of a magic wand, or dipping a divine hand into a celestial top hat and pulling out the earth and all the bits that go to make it up. God spoke things into being. The Message paraphrases v9 as “he spoke and there it was, in place the moment he said so.”

What God spoke into wasn’t small. It wasn’t limited to one or two varieties of things. The land bursts forth with every kind of grass. There are not just one or two stars but a whole sky brimming with them. The waters swarm and teem with fish and the skies fill with birds. There is an abundance of life exploding everywhere in a variety of different forms. There is more than enough. This is like God going over the top, doing more than just the minimum.

When I read the words in Psalm 33, what came to mind was a desire for God to speak words of life over me. In terms of salvation, Jesus’ words, “It is finished” was spoken over me. Sin is finished. Death is finished. The old self with its carnal nature is finished. My citizenship under the prince of darkness is finished. Any old allegiances are finished. I live in the good of what Jesus accomplished.

But I do believe that there are other words that God would like to speak over me. Just as in the creation story there was bursting forth, brimming, swarming and teeming – I think that is for each and every individual life too. As I said last night – I feel very little is happening a lot of the time and long for some kind of spiritual explosion.

I have been in the kind of church that lays hands on people and imparts a blessing. People prophesy over other people. To some extent I fall into the trap of thinking that if the church leader says something then it carries more weight than if I say it. This is so not the case. It is lazy thinking – letting someone else shoulder s responsibility that I can take on for myself.

It is also dangerous thinking. I don’t need to look many years into my Christian history to see people that I was encouraged to think heard more clearly from God. I am not saying that some people are not gifted with discernment and words of knowledge or whatever, but sometimes it is too easy to surrender up that responsibility solely to people in leadership.

I am not a baby Christian. I am well capable of hearing God. That I don’t always trust that I what I hear is from God – that’s a different issue. As much as I would love to take the “easy” option and encourage someone to lay their hand on my shoulder and tell me what God is saying – what I really need to do is to by-pass the middle man, to have God say what he want to say to me directly!

And God will say it!

Telling it Like it Isn't

I am sure that we have all rented out duff DVDs in our time. Included on our list is “Sands of the Sahara”. I have no idea what the story line was all about as it’s so long ago now, but I remember my husband thinking that in a previous existence it might have been a mini series, and then edited down to film sized length. There was a lack of continuity.

Another on the list is “Night Train to Venis”. I think it was supposed to be a spy thriller – it certainly sounds like it, doesn’t it. I can’t tell you that much about it as I only watched the first fifteen minutes. The dialogue and the acting were not great.

A third DVD made the list a couple of nights ago. The blurb on the back of “Virgin Territory” sold it as a romance with a bit of swash and buckle. The princess is in trouble, the villain takes advantage and the hero from the wrong side of town arrives on his dashing steed, sword in hand to save the day. It wasn’t heavy. Just fluff – what you are looking for to chill out and leave your brain soaking in a glass of lemonade.

What we should have looked at was the small print on the back that tells you things about the amount of violence, swear words and references of a sexual nature. No violence – which is surprising as the two men in the picture on the front were definitely wielding swords! No swear words either! Ah! There is was “frequent references of a sexual nature!” We should have read that bit! The “Virgin” bit of the title should also have offered us a clue.

If ever there was a film where the blurb on the back cover bore absolutely no relation to the action – this was that film. The characters were all there – the princess, the hero and the villain. They just didn’t follow the usual story book protocol. It was all too “adult” for me and I switched it off and watched the round up of the Olympics instead.

I felt robbed of a good night, curled up on the sofa, drinking lemonade and snuggling up. I was robbed of a feel good, happy ending where good triumphs over evil – that might have been the ending, but getting to it was more than I could stomach.

The words on the back of the cover promised much but failed to deliver!

So much in life promises much but fails to deliver!

Not so with God! He makes no promises that He doesn’t deliver!

“By faith Abraham…was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.” Hebrews 11:11

Healing - Part of the Salvation Package

I shouldn’t be surprised when God answers prayer. It’s not that I don’t get answers – I do, but there are some requests that I make that at the time do not seem to be answered. I am speaking of prayers for healing – the ones I pray for myself!

I can’t count the number of times when I have prayed over colds, sore throats and other aches and pains. I have always assumed that the nature of the illness was not that severe that time and nature would not do their stuff eventually. A sleepless night of coughing and spluttering were small in comparison to dealing with cancer or something.

There has, however, been something probably just as small, but infinitely more painful over the last few months. I have been waking up in the middle of the night with a feeling of being suffocated. It feels like tight band across my upper abdomen and I find it hard to breath. After a while, things begin to relax a little, but it is all very painful. I am quite sure that it is just a very painful episode of indigestion. I am not a doctor, so I could be wrong. After an hour or two of the cramps, a visit to the toilet usually sorts things out.

While I was away on holiday, visiting family, I had a very bad session. I was awake most of the night and eventually drove to an all night petrol station to buy pain killers and indigestion tablets which had absolutely no effect at all. That was after praying fervently for a healing touch that never came.

I was no better in the morning, the day we were due to come home, and was incapable of driving anywhere. The following day, having had to pay for an extra night at the hotel, I drove home. I wasn’t really up to it, but another night was out of the question.

I think it took a week to feel like myself again. That maybe sounds like something more serious the indigestion. Frankly I think it was the KFC chicken things. A touch of food poisoning perhaps. I used to have a steel lined stomach in my younger days, but as I get older, things don’t always agree with me. I know that you can have these allergy tests done, but I would be horrified to discover a list of things that I am allergic to.

Earlier this afternoon I felt the stirrings of another attack of indigestion. There was the same tight feeling of being unable to breathe and a severe pain that had me doubled over. It was bad. I am sure I was groaning loud enough to be heard next door. I will admit to taking a couple of painkillers just before I slipped onto my knees and prayed.

I don’t think there was anything different in the words I used, or my sincerity, or faith level. I just knew that I couldn’t do another week like the last time. There was absolutely no time for the painkillers to take effect. I had taken them some twenty seconds before I began to pray. I remember praying that the pain would leave just as swiftly as it had come, and that healing was part of the salvation package. And then it happened – just as quickly as the pain had come, it went away. Not after a while. Not a gradual feeling better. It really was instant, straight away, immediate – and I was amazed!

The sceptics would say that it was the tablets. The spiritually zealous would condemn me for taking the tablets in the first place. I say that God healed me!

Eau de Burnt Bolognese

“Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” John 12:3

There is a fragrance in our house at the moment. The word fragrance evokes images of something pleasant. Perhaps the word smell would better describe it.

Earlier on in the week, perhaps Monday, my husband arrived home very late. I had made a Bolognese sauce to go with pasta and left it in the pan for him to heat through. Then I had gone to bed. Apparently, between switching on the hotplate and returning to see how it was doing, he had fallen asleep on the sofa. Who knows how long he was asleep, but I can guess what it was that woke him up – smoke!

I was woken up by the smell of the smoke and made my way downstairs through a misty haze.

My husband was in the kitchen “dealing with it”. The black burnt remains of the sauce were being scraped into the bin.

Since that day, the “fragrance” has hung about the house. I find myself sniffing the hall carpet, the net curtain in the kitchen, the towels in the bathroom and, yes, even pressing my nose against the painted wall of the hallway. The smell seems to have permeated every surface of the house. Doors and windows left wide open seem to have little effect in diminishing the odour.

Just how long does it take? What else must I do?

It reminds me of the story of Mary breaking the jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet and filling her home with its wonderful fragrance. How long did the fragrance fill her home? Did she open all the windows and doors to try to clear the house of the aroma? Did she, perhaps, keep the doors closed to try to hold on to the fragrance? For week afterwards, did she pick up things and catch a hint of the perfume that remained?

There is nothing pleasant about the aroma of burnt Bolognese sauce. If only my husband had spilled a bottle of perfume instead!

A piece of wood

Exodus 15:22-25 - “Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "What are we to drink?" Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.”

It’s not always obvious from just looking at something that something is wrong. Take me, for instance - I am sure my husband will echo that thought – I look fine. I am not pale or wan. I haven’t fainted or spewed up. I look robust and healthy.

But..

If you could just peel away my skin, roll it up carefully (there are enough wrinkles already) and lay it to one side. If you could unhook all the tendons and muscles and hang them over the back of a chair. Leave the heart alone. I don’t think that is where the problem lies – (although God might not agree with me on that one!) I’d rather you didn’t touch the lungs and liver. Head south – somewhere around the abdomen. Try untangling the intestines. Pretend it’s the end of the toothpaste tube and squeeze gently. Ouch! I did say gently!

It’s not a pretty sight! All is not well in digestive system. I have eaten too much, too often and the belly is revolting! (Revolting as in the verb, not in the adjective!) I don’t think it is just the quantity of food that has been consumed. I have a feeling that it may also be the quality. I have eaten something that seriously disagrees with me.

As I said before – you can’t tell by looking at my outside that anything is wrong, but, believe me, having lived with my insides for a better part of a week, I know for sure that there is something not right!

Moses and the Israelites couldn’t tell by looking at the water that there was something wrong. It looked like water. It probably didn’t have a suspicious looking scum floating about on the top of it. It took someone to sip it to discover that there was a problem.

“A piece of wood” was the solution to Moses. Thrown into it transformed something bitter into something sweet. The story ends with God revealing something about himself – “for I am the LORD, who heals you." What is it that I can throw into my digestive system that will transform it? I have tried indigestion tablets and aspirins by the pocketful with little success.

Maybe it is time to toss in a bit of wood – a reminder that the death and resurrection of Jesus cures all ills – the physical ones, the emotional ones and the spiritual ones!

Chasing Fantasies

I read Proverbs 12:11 this morning, “He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgement.”

From a farming point of view it’s obvious that if you don’t plough the fields and sow the seeds, there will be nothing to harvest come autumn. There will be no abundant food. Just because it is wild and windy out in the fields, or wretched and raining, or indeed hot and humid, the farmer cannot afford to sit around and wait for better weather.

I am thinking about the land that I have been given. It is not a physical field of grass and hedges. It is all that makes up my life – the relationships that I enjoy, the talents and skills that I possess, the job with all its challenges. My field is made up of all the varying aspects of my life. All of them, with the right amount of work, should be wielding a harvest of some kind, but I wonder which bits are lying fallow.

If I had actually done all that I had imagined doing over these last few weeks I would have:-

• Dealt with the weeds in the garden
• Called the plumber to repair the leak in the loft
• Driven the car to the garage to have the dents and scratches sorted
• Contacted the heating engineer to replace to the boiler and the gas heater

Perhaps it is when I look at my walk with Jesus that I am most shocked about how little I work the “land” – the prayers that don’t get answered because I don’t pray them, the illnesses that I endure because of the promise of healing that I don’t claim, the mediocre life I live because of the promises in God’s word that I don’t hunt out and hang on to, the challenging conversations I don’t have because I don’t visit friends, the opportunities to witness that I don’t take advantage of because I lack confidence… the list is a long one!

If only I lived the life I imagined to live, where my fantasies were transformed into realities, by some hard work, how different I would be, and perhaps how different the people around me would be too!

It is time to stop chasing fantasies and start doing some hard work!

A Pocket History of the Last Few Weeks

“What’s it got in its pocketses?”

It might have been a life changing question for Bilbo Baggins in the book “The Hobbit”, but for me it’s just a bit of trivia that says something about what I have been up to recently and other things

Tissues – I sneeze a lot. I was amazed to discover that most people don’t. I find that until I have sneezed at least half a dozen times in the morning I am not really awake. Some might suggest that I must have a allergy to something – being awake, perhaps?

A used ticket for Glasgow’s underground trains – the system is called the Clockwork Orange. It’s the Metro in miniature! The trains are short, the platforms are short and the list of stations along the line is also short! It is less busy than the underground at London, less threatening. I seem to remember many years ago having my purse stolen on the London underground somewhere between Walthamstow and Covent Garden.

A new AA membership card – I have been with them for nine years according to my card. A good investment considering the number of times that I have called the out. It has usually been about flat batteries having left the lights on too long. The last flat battery incident was Easter time. We were on our way to visit the folks in Englandshire and had stopped off at Pitlochry for breakfast. The lights were not on for long, but enough to drain the battery. The AA card was not in the purse and I approached a wee man who had pulled up to recycle old newspapers and bottles at the far end of the car park. He went home to get his jump leads! What a nice man!

A stone – it is very glittery. It looks dull when it is out of the light. I picked it up on a recent walk through the Glenmore forest. I know that some places tell you not to take things home with you. It’s not as if it’s a fossil, or a semi precious gem – it’s just a small stone.

A green pen – it’s actually a blue pen. I thought it would be green. I bought a pack of them – a blue, black, red and green one thinking that the outside of the pen mattered. I go through red pens quite rapidly. However, whatever the outside colour of the pen, they all turned out to be blue pens – even the black one was blue.

£1.61p in change – I have no idea why such a specific amount. The penny is probably picked up off the floor. I used to walk with my head down looking for dropped pennies – then I decided that was no way to walk anywhere – looking down at the ground. It was too earth-bound a posture, so I stopped doing it.

A maroon coloured toy car – I bet you don’t have one of those in your pocket! Last week we went to a Quiz night organised by my husband’s work. I go to so many of their socials now that I am sure people are wondering whereabouts in the office my desk is. It was a quiz based on TV Quiz shows. Everyone in the team got to fly solo. I represented my team in the “Catchphrase” round. Our team got the overall biggest score in the end, but chose not to gamble thinking we were far enough in front not to be caught. We came second, another team gambled and got ten extra points, and our consolation prizes were the toy cars

My new Bingo card - there are too many plastic cards issued for various things. I think someone ought to implement hand prints, or thumb prints or iris scanners.

A restaurant receipt – The big multiplex cinema is very picky about what films it will show. There may be dozens of screens, but most of them show the same latest box office hit and the not so mainstream films get elbowed out. Eden Court cinema tends to pick them up. Eden Court has been upgraded. The new cinema is very plush. The seats are so soft and not numb bumming at all. We went to the restaurant first. It was very nice, but we didn’t have enough time for desert! The film was full of moral dilemma and not the least easy watch!

A hairdressing appointment card – I got my hair done seeing as we are going away on holiday. My natural shade is grey – but my husband thinks that there is no need to stay grey when there is a huge variety of bottles and lotions available! I used to be dark brown –very dark brown. The salon has changed hands. The new lady uses different colours. In between colouring and cutting and blow-drying my hair she was fielding phone-calls. Apparently the previous manager didn’t pay people and has left a string of debts which the new manager is having to sort out. Despite the distractions I came out looking passable – the cut is nice (how long will it take to for the side parting to sneak into the middle?), the colour is a bit too dark.

A badge – a ceramic pink tartan ribbon thing in aid of the Scottish Breast Cancer Scheme. It appeared in my pigeon hole at work during one theses raising awareness weeks. The only significant thing I have noticed about that part of my anatomy (or those parts seeing as there is more than one of them) is that they are definitely not pert! Gravity has taken its toll!

Like abandoned babies

Psalm 35:13b-14a “When my prayers returned to me unanswered, I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.”

This comes in the middle of a prayer of King David for God to stand up for him and fight against his enemies. It seemed to him that God was being silent while his enemies were free and unrestrained in their mockery of him. David was fulfilling his side of “treat others the way you would like to be treated yourself”, but he wasn’t being treated so nice by others.

I reached the bit about unanswered prayer and I started to think about my own response when God seems silent. King David digs in deep – out come the sack cloth and ashes. He mourns. He takes prayer to a deeper level, not content with God’s silence. It matters to him that God hears and God answers.

My own response is so very different. I had a very brief but clear picture of a new-born baby abandoned on a doorstep!

A mother is committed to the baby not just for the first few days, or until it no longer needs her milk, or until it can walk, or talk, or become a little bit more independent. The mother is committed right up until the child matures and leaves home, and even then she is still involved.

I may not have abandoned any babies on doorsteps, but I am quite sure I have abandoned some very important prayers, because I didn’t see an immediate response from God. Suddenly the burden became too heavy, I wasn’t sure that God was going to shoulder it with me, or that He was even interested, or that it really mattered that much. And so, just like an abandoned baby, I dropped it and walked away. I am not even sure that I dropped it on someone else’s doorstep!

I was reading earlier on this week about Caleb waiting forty-five years to finally claim his bit of the Promised Land. I don’t think I could even climb a mountain, let alone fight the giants who lived there. Caleb is not like me! He kept himself in shape and he held onto the word of God!

He abandoned none of his babies!

Two Little Ducks

Rites of passage are ceremonies that mark important events in a person’s life. If I get around to sending a wedding acceptance card, later on in the month I will witness my friend taking her wedding vows.

In addition to the official rites of passage like baptisms, weddings and funerals, there are lots of unofficial ones. For my family, amongst the girls at least, it was our first bingo game! At the age of eighteen we were old enough to join the village Working Man’s Club - not that in my case I was either working (I was still at school doing “A” levels and planning to go to university) or a man!

My mother sat around the table surrounded by my elder sisters and we played Bingo! The winnings didn’t amount to much, unless it was the “snowball” which was £50 or more. That was quite a lot in those days! I may have won a line. The first appearance at bingo as soon after the eighteenth birthday was a must, but attendance after that was purely voluntary – and I never caught the bug.

A couple of Christmases ago, my husband bought me a set of bingo markers with a promise that he would take me to the new Bingo emporium (the word “hall” doesn’t match the look of the building!). The manager of the club was a friend of his from school days in Glasgow. Being told that it was my birthday in March, the manager had said that he would treat us to the night out – but we would have to pay for the “books”.

It didn’t quite materialize. We never seemed to dig out diaries and set dates. Last night we decided we would go. The bingo markers were dug out from the back of the drawer and we headed off.

This was most unlike the village Working Man’s Club. The place was huge! The foyer was all glitzy with water fountains behind glass panels. There was also a crowd of people outside the entrance smoking a last cigarette before heading inside. Having learned that we were “bingo virgins” someone walked us through the whole process. There were dozens of different game cards – one of which was a “national game” .Then our guide took us on a tour of the bar and the café.

Once settled down, two ladies at the other end of table saw to it that we were marking the right card at the right time. They tutted every so often when Joe and I giggled at how serious everyone was. I think they frowned when Joe won a game – not a mere £50 I can assure you!

What really struck me about it, comparing the whole thing with the Working Man’s Club was a lack of – the best word I can think of – colour. I remember that, in my first bingo experience, they didn’t just call the number. It wasn’t just “6 and 9, 69”. Many of the numbers had bits attached. 69 was the “upside down one”. Some of the numbers were easy enough to guess where they were coming from – “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed”, “Two fat ladies – 88” (in the age of political correctness, one can see why they may have abandoned that one – along with the sexist “legs 11”), “two little ducks – 22” (my own personal favourite). Some of them were not so easy to work out – something and 9 (could be 3, 4 or 5 – I don’t remember which) – “the Brighton Line”. This is what I mean by colour. I missed that last night – I missed the two little ducks!

I suppose that is where big business and simple enjoyment part company. No one could say that in the Working man’s Club people were out to win a fortune. There was no way they could win enough money to pay off their mortgage with a shout of “house”. Last night, at the Bingo emporium, that was a possibility – in the national game, if your final winning number was 99 (or “top of the shop” in the old days). The emporium doesn’t have time to spend on “two little ducks” when there are so many books to get through, and big bucks to rake in.

Improving the Church Expereince

I thought for a moment that I had sold my principles for a £20 Tesco voucher yesterday morning!

I was ambushed beside the recycling containers by a harmless looking woman. Through one ear I was listening to the satisfying smash of bottles inside the big containers. The other ear was being assailed by a woman telling me that she had not met her quota and could I please give an hour of my time to do her a favour!

The favour was simple enough – walk around the supermarket and give my opinion of the layout of the store and suggest improvements to make the shoppers’ experiences that much more satisfying. The difficult part was in working out which boxes to tick in terms of my attitude towards Tescos. I suspect that I was more unhappy than happy, and if she needed an unhappy person, to balance her cross section of ordinary shoppers, I could be that person. I was assured that they were not interested in the views of the “unhappy” customers, because obviously they are only going to say negative stuff! So why have a box on the form for unhappy people? It seems to me that you need to listen to the views of the unhappy ones too to find out why they are so unhappy!

So we ticked the “mixed” view box in the end.

What am I not happy about? I think it could be the cheap prices. It makes me wonder how they can produce things so cheaply. At whose expense are they making a profit? I also wonder about the small local businesses that cannot compete price-wise and end up closing down. In one of our units on Justice in the World we look at the way big multi-national companies produce things so cheaply and elbow their competitors out of the way. Once the competitors are gone, they can up their prices because they are the only supplier left in town.

Tesco will never be the only supplier in town – but you get my drift.

So it was under some apprehension this morning that I turned up to do my walk about and give my views. It was nice to discover that a colleague from work had also been ambushed by the same woman, and we were in it together. My friend had obviously given it a lot more thought than I had. She was able to rattle of a dozen areas where they could make improvements, starting with the car-park

The lady that took us around asked us plenty of questions about certain sections of the store, the freshness and range of food, the speed through the checkouts, the helpfulness of the staff etc. Many of the questions focussed on the negative things, about what we didn’t like about the store and what could be improved.

Her final questions, after the walkabout and the general discussion, was in interesting one. If Tesco implemented all the changes we had suggested – fresh fish counters, proper butchers, a bigger range of some of the products – would we come more often? Would it make any difference to our shopping habits? Would we spend more?

My honest answer was “No” in the sense that it is where I tend to do the weekly shop anyway. I go often enough, and I already think I spend too much there and I don’t give enough of my business to the smaller independent shops like I could. I don’t want any more reasons to shop at Tescos – or Morrisons, or Sainsburys or Asda.

Coming away from my market research hour in Tescos, I thought about applying their techniques to church setting! What is it about church that you like, or you don’t like? Are the seats too hard, or too soft? Is the décor pleasing to the eye? Are the words projected onto a big screen better than leafing through a hymn book? Talking of hymns, are they outdated? Should it be all modern songs and choruses? Is the sermon too long? Or too irrelevant? Are the congregation welcoming? Or judgemental?

And finally after you have discussed it all – your final questions – “If we made the changes you have suggested, will you come more often?”

The honest answer? Probably not!

Many churches have made changes in they way they do things. I don’t think they have changed to attract people who otherwise wouldn’t come. I think they have changed to find better ways to worship and help people to live holy lives in the world.

In the end though, it is people that need to change. God doesn’t fit himself around people and their routines. It is people that need to dismantle what they do to fit around God.

Game, Set and Match

I guess I always knew that when Andy Murray came up against Nadal in the quarter finals at Wimbledon, he had hit a brick wall and gone as far as he could. Nadal was unstoppable. The man is strong and fast and determined to win.

The interviewer after the game made the point that Nadal is just one year older and is going to be playing the same tournaments as Andy over the next few years. The bottom line was – “Why bother? Nadal is always going to be there! You can’t beat him!”

Murray gave a really wise answer. Nadal last year was beatable. Over the year he had improved his game, addressed his weaknesses, improved his strengths and he was a better player. There is always natural talent – but on top of that there is training and discipline and hard work. If Nadal could do that in a year – then so could Murray!

Commentators have not been slow to talk about the changes in Murray’s game. I read an interesting article on the “nicification” of Andy Murray, of how the Murray camp have made him much more appealing to the British public – not loud, or abrasive, dragged a cute puppy into the picture and placed the pretty girlfriend on display. But ignore all of that – what matters is what happens on the court. His serves are faster and stronger. He has worked out in the gym to build up stamina and strength. He is doing what Nadal did! He is looking at the weakness of his game and doing something about them.

I have just been reading through chapters 10, 11 and 12 of Joshua. It reads like a Wimbledon tennis tournament – imagine Joshua as Nadal relentlessly marching through all the rounds, wiping out the opposition with powerful serves and magnificent returns. Unstoppable no matter the size and the experience of the man on the other side of the net.

What makes the victory sure for Joshua is not all the hard work that he has put into the training of his men, though I dare say they haven’t sat around on their backsides all day, is his unswerving obedience to God. God has said that He has given the nations into Joshua’s hand. He has stepped on the necks of his enemies and has been told that victory is his every time. Joshua takes God at His word and claims the victories one after another, even to the extent of demanding that God stops the sun in its tracks to give him time to finish the fight! And God does – because He sees His heart reflected in Joshua’s own.

I am trying to picture my foot on the neck of my enemy – and to hold that picture in my head, so that the times when I serve a double fault in life, or surrender a set point to the opposition, or miss the volley – I do not lose the sense that victory is mine in the end.

Safe

“Red Sea to the front of them, Pharaoh at the back – here they were stuck in the middle with God”

It was all about God setting the scene to display His glory, not necessarily to His people this time, but to His enemies. The whole of Egypt was about to learn that there was no messing with God and what God claimed as His own.

The Israelites didn’t see it that way. As far as they were concerned they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The impenetrable barrier of the Red Sea was in front of them, and the Egyptian army was coming up behind. They didn’t see any way out.

It was a complaint they were going to lay at Moses’ and God’s feet throughout the next forty years – about them dying in the wilderness, brought out of “safe” Egypt to be massacred, and that life was much better before Moses interfered.

Egypt became synonymous with safety, and yet there wasn’t any real safety there at all. Where was the safety in sons being put to death as they were born? Where was the safety in their working conditions as they built whatever it was they built? Perhaps there is a certain safety in “business as usual”, in familiar routines, unpleasant though they may be. People have coping mechanisms that are adequate for a particular setting.

God’s “safe” didn’t have any appearance of being safe at all and yet it was the safest place in the world. It doesn’t look safe but it is, not because of any of the externals, but because of the presence of God.

As I was reading the account in Exodus, the news was buzzing in the background. The report was about the elections in Zimbabwe. The leader of the opposition party had stood down leaving Robert Mugabe a clear path to power. As I was reading it was like the political situation in Zimbabwe was overlaid on the story of the Exodus. The people in Zimbabwe are as much between a rock and a hard place as the Israelites were. In front of them was the election process, behind them were the supporters of Mugabe – intimidating electors, killing more than a few, insisting people turn up an vote for someone they didn’t want in power, but powerless themselves to make a difference.

I don’t know enough about the politics of this country, let alone the politics of another. I don’t know why there is so much silence from those that could raise a banner in support of free elections. I don’t know when living to fight another day becomes more prudent than dying for a cause.

I found myself praying for God to intervene – much like he intervened for the Israelites. Both groups of people were denied freedom. Both groups of people are in need of a deliverer.

One of the on-line newspapers said that “Mr Mugabe has said "only God" can remove him.” It is almost a challenge, isn’t it? If only I were God…

The Mechanics of Hugging

I learned to hug some time between 1982 and 1987.

Our family wasn’t really a demonstrative family. We didn’t hug, or hold hands, or cuddle or stand side by side with arms draped across shoulders or round waists. We were just not touchy feely people. It wasn’t quite all stiff upper lips and ramrod backs – but not that far from that. We just didn’t hug and didn’t feel inclined to!

In 1982 I headed off to Cyprus to teach in a small Christian school with very close links to the Brethren Church. They hugged a lot. Greetings were not exchanging handshakes or air kisses on either cheek, but a solid, and at times quite crushing, embrace. They were tactile people!

Quite accidentally, I started hugging my sisters. It wasn’t intentional. I just forgot that I wasn’t in church. I had been home for the holidays and was all packed up waiting for the taxi to take me to the train station when I turned around and pulled my sister into an embrace. I hugged her.

There was a moment, a look of total surprise on her face, a slight inclination to pull away before she surrendered and joined in the hug. Now it has become part and parcel of meetings and departures. I think my eldest sister enjoys them most and had become the initiator rather than just the recipient. It is a race to see who can hug who first when we meet!

I was dreaming last night about hugs – or, perhaps more significantly, the lack of hugs. I am not sure where I was, but a meting had been arranged between me and a friend. She was my best friend at secondary school and over the years we had lost touch. In my dream we were seated in a room and the whole meeting was permeated in awkwardness. We were not comfortable with each other’s company. In the real world we haven’t seen each other for twenty years or more, and for all but maybe on or two letters and a score of Christmas cards, we really have lost touch. In the dream she was surrounded by her family. I wasn’t married, but somehow had a son called Nick. (There is something not nice about waking up to discover that you don’t have a son called Nick – I know he doesn’t exist but I really miss him!)

Conversation was stilted between us. It was painful and embarrassing and all of us wanted it to end soon. I think it was me that eventually excused myself and stood up to say goodbye. As is my habit I reached out to give my friend a hug. She just didn’t seem to know what to do. Her arms were held stiff against her side and she looked at me with a perplexed expression. It was more than about why we should be hugging when we didn’t seem to have any relationship left that warranted a hug, but more about not knowing the mechanics of hugging.

How do you teach someone how to hug? Isn’t it something you just so? Apparently not in the dream world! I can remember in the dream world having to position her arms – one going up and over my shoulder, the other going down and around my waist. Then we hugged. It was like a re-run of my first hug with my sister – that brief moment of holding off before surrendering. Then it was real – it wasn’t just the physical meeting of two bodies in an embrace, but we made connections on all levels. It was a good hug!

Then I was aware than my hand was resting on her head and I was praying for her. I don’t know what I was praying, but it was fervent and passionate and powerful.

“Hug me too!” I was dazed as my friend and I broke apart, to be met with the other people in the room wanting a hug. And then I woke up…

We need to feel connected to people. Too often we live disconnected lives. Even as Christians, meeting in the same church body, we don’t always make the connections. Sometimes the hug is a substitute for really getting to know someone properly. It is not enough without the background relationship – like jewel rolling around on a workbench that ought to be in the setting of a gold ring.

As I think about the dream, I am challenged to think about all the connections that I make with people and what I can do to make those connections good hugs. It is out of the connections that perhaps we are drawn to pray for people more fervently, passionately and powerfully.